A Tribute to My Grandfather, Howard Walter (March 28, 1923-Jan.25, 2016)

I refuse to think of today as the day I lost my grandfather, but instead, I’ll remember it as the day that he and my grandmother were reunited. Growing up, I heard two versions of how they met in Carbondale, PA.  One recounted how he saw a young woman driving his brother's recently sold car, and curiosity told him to follow it. The version I prefer is that after the used car kept breaking down, she brought it back to complain to an unmoved seller, and my grandfather happily repaired it.  Their relationship blossomed, and when her mother refused to let her follow him to his training camp before he deployed to World War II, they quickly married in 1944. While he served in the Battle of the Bulge, the only war stories I ever heard were about sleeping sitting up, the importance of constantly changing your socks, and his unit’s cook who helped him pillage a hand crank ice cream machine which they somehow rigged to a motor, producing enough nostalgia-inspiring dessert for their entire unit.

This gentle giant, the last remaining of seven Walter siblings, adored his big-boned, well-loved mother, but was always disliked and bullied by his small-statured father (who apparently resented him for his size). A father, who after his wife's death and his older children’s entry into the world, shipped his youngest off to a neighbor and left my teenage grandfather alone in the house to finish out high school and pay for necessities by scooping ice cream in the afternoons. And when this crotchety father was elderly and nearly blind, with a condition that made him feel his face was constantly moist, it was my grandfather who would stop by most days after work to clean up crumpled piles of paper towels and ensure the old man had enough to eat.

I remember the terrifying tale of how while working construction, with a young family at home, my grandfather fell off a roof and doctors wondered if he would ever walk again. Once he recovered, he decided to take his skills to the local high school where he would teach shop class for decades, pulling generations of young men out of the dangerous and shrinking Scranton coal industry and point them toward lucrative trades. But before that career began, he juggled construction work, fatherhood, teaching vo-tech, and earning his teaching degree. He would arrive home dirty and sweaty to a bath and a meal, and a wife who would brilliantly brief him on his assigned readings so he could participate in his night classes—once impressing his teacher with details from the Iliad no other student could recall.

A power couple, they cooperatively earned a college degree and his teaching career began. As a young girl I remember asking where framed charcoal drawings and curious lamps came from to hear they were gifts from various grateful students. I heard stories about his years at the high school: one where a student fell asleep in class, so he pulled down the shades and quietly a led out the other students, leaving the boy to waken in hilarious confusion. Once another teacher bet my burly grandfather that he couldn't tip over his new car, and when he refused to pay the agreed-upon amount after he'd accomplished the feat, Howard simply left the vehicle on its side. One of his last outings with my grandmother was to a former student's 60th birthday party--he participated as a surprise guest in a "this is your life" skit, after which he was greeted with the warmest and most grateful of hugs. 

When my grandmother had passed and my grandfather was in a retirement home, I spent one spring alone at their lake cottage, chipping away at my dissertation. One morning, clad only in a bathing suit as I reset the water heater, I watched a middle aged man in a leather jacket roll down the dirt driveway on a Harley. Danger flares ignited in my belly until he asked for "Mr. Walter, my shop teacher." When I explained where he was, and scribbled the address on a post it, he roared back towards civilization. When my uncle visited my grandfather in the nursing home that night in faraway State College, Howard told his son that a former student had come to see him that afternoon. 

Pop-pop, know that every time I visit the lake cottage with my own children, I imagine you and Mom-mom as newlyweds, sleeping in a pup-tent as you began building the structure on that lakeside piece of heaven you purchased for a hard-earned $500. I see my four-year-old self sitting in your lap, giggling manically as I unbuttoned your shirt buttons and you playfully berated me, or I pretended to be a marionette who was supposed to say “Mama” when I bent at the waist, but always said “Dada” to your feigned frustration.  I see us digging for worms in the wet compost heap behind the jungle gym you built us at the edge of the property, then sitting on the dock in my Mickey Mouse life vest, fishing with you until the sun kissed the water. I see my brothers and me laying in the wagon attached to your golf cart, staring up at summer skies as you drove us up and down dirt roads, feeling the vibrations tickle our backs.  I see Mom-mom effortlessly treading water mid-lake with your grandchildren as you watch us from your swing, a trucker’s cap shielding your eyes, a towel draped over your shoulders, and a look of contentment resting on your face. I taste the watermelon you sliced for us with a giant machete-like knife and the feel the coarse peanuts we all shelled after a long swim. I hear bad 90s dance music as my cousin Jessica and I make-up dance routines, barefoot in the front yard. I smell the warm wood in your shop being transformed into building blocks, toy castles, rocking horses, shields and round-tipped swords that would decorate my childhood.  And every time I return with my own children, I see the family and the life that you built in the very walls of the cottage, not just displayed in the pictures that hang upon them. 

And I see you both everywhere in my own suburban life.  The degrees that hang in my study remind me of the years Craig and I lived in Binghamton, less than an hour from the cottage, and all the meals you hosted in your sunroom as the four of us looked out at a placid, lapping, or frozen lake.  Sometimes I think I only earned that final degree because you both reminded me that I had to, especially after coming so far, and then let me live with you that last spring of my coursework when my husband’s career had already led him to Philadelphia.  Every time I enter the classroom, I hope to be the kind of teacher you were, one that reminds my students of the potential they carry and leads them toward lives and careers they hadn’t imagined they could obtain.  And when I look at my oldest son, I will forever see your broad shoulders and your warm, German brown eyes, while my youngest is adorned with your wife’s tight curls.  So while the sadness of this day is undeniable, your life, and the life you built, is reflected in my own and the love you and Mom-mom have shown me will be a part of my very being, always and forever.